


HTTP 500

by Fabular_Mr_Fox



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Banter, Cats, Dubious Consent, Hipster Q, Kink, Knitting, London, M/M, Masturbation, Q like Crashpad, Toys, budget cuts, fight me, midcentury modern, office politics, precisionist artwork, the entire plot of an invented James Bond movie squeezed into three paragraphs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-10-30 10:50:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17827181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabular_Mr_Fox/pseuds/Fabular_Mr_Fox
Summary: China shop, meet bull.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No porn yet, but we will get there, I promise.

It’s 11:00 a.m., well past rush hour, when Q minds the gap at Angel, and that means there's an empty seat. He folds himself into the space between a crustpunk and a woman in a conservative skirt suit and sets his briefcase on his lap. Then, with as little production as possible--so brisk it borders on shame--he takes a set of needles from inside.

Some people listen to podcasts on their commutes. Q knits.

It's math, really. Just lines and lines of code. Each stitch is an if:then, the pattern composed of a thousand logical outcomes feeding one into another.

The physicality is also satisfying, though the combination of bad posture, days spent coding, and commutes and evenings hunched over needles and books has done a number on his wrists and now he sleeps in double braces. Still, how interesting it is to watch his own hands work as though they are components in some mechanical wonder of the Industrial Revolution. The subconscious motion of his pinkie, easing the tension when the yarn draws too tightly between needle and forefinger, could easily be replicated by a piece of clever engineering. He can imagine it done with springs and gears.

Q knits because it is the closest he can come to making himself into a machine.

This is not as dire as it sounds. Q takes machines as his model for many things in life: as long as they are well-designed, tuned correctly, and well-cared for, machines complete their functions perfectly every time. Given the same input, they produce the same output. They are elegant, and that elegance pleases him. He strives for it in his own existence.

His life, as dictated by these ideals, is good. It is ordered, comfortable, and healthy. He has lived wildly: university was pills, powders, and unsafe sex; unchecked anxiety; deep insecurities; unhealthy coping mechanisms. But the only pill he's taken in the last five years is cyclobenzaprine, and that only on occasion. He has found healthier ways to manage his fears, in his early thirties, and a niche in which he can live comfortably. 

Q likes order. Q likes regularity. Q likes efficiency. 

Well-meaning muscle bears at the gym often give him unsolicited tips for bulking up, but he is not there for muscle: he is there to optimize his body’s functions. To make his body more efficient. Peak efficient. He views his time in Crossfit classes the same as he does modding his hardware for faster processing. 

He prefers his Tuesday-Thursday ashtanga yoga. More women, less posturing and insecurity, fewer protein shakes. Still, he alternates, because what one set of exercises fails to do, the other compensates for. 

He takes early morning classes. Leaving for work at 11:00 a.m. is not a product of sleeping late, but rather careful scheduling. Up at six, feed the cats, meditate, granola and plain yogurt for breakfast, with whatever fruit is in season--Q is meticulous about seasonality in his food, because it is the product of a larger, complex system that it is inefficient to disrupt, though in the winter he makes exceptions for vegetables grown hydroponically, as long as they are also local. Read the news, check email. At eight, either Crossfit or yoga. At nine, back to the flat for a shower and a change of clothes. News again, and emails. Then the train at eleven, because he works late but insists on maintaining work-life balance unless there is a dire need for his presence.

Nine hours in the office--there is time set aside for lunch, which makes eight working hours, with dinner eaten at his desk--and he _should_ leave at eight thirty, in time for nine o’clock home. Feed the cats again. Then two hours for household chores and reading, fifteen minutes extra in case he’s not done with a chapter, and then fifteen minutes to get ready for bed.

But tonight, 007 crawls out of the smoking crater of a mission in Nicaragua and catches a flight that drops him in Q’s lap right about the time he'd rather be closing up shop.

“Do you have any idea how much this cost?” Q asks, holding up the charred and mangled carcass of a surveillance drone. “Do I need to remind you that Q branch is facing--”

“Crippling budget cuts? I'll make sure to vote Tory in the next election. In the meantime, let me do the paperwork and I'll get out of your hair.”

Q clenches his teeth. It has been drilled into the entire branch, the necessity to cut costs, stretch every pound. The proposal process for R&D has grown Byzantine. They've done their best, but the international technological arms race is not inexpensive, and their best isn't good enough for Parliament.

Cuts will mean layoffs. Cuts will mean agents with outdated tech. Cuts will cost him coworkers, and may cost his coworkers their lives. Cuts mean change, and change means instability, unpredictability. Q’s least favorite things.

“I'm afraid your wit is missing the mark today.” He slaps a clipboard into 007’s outstretched hand. “Rather like your anti-aircraft ordinance.”

“The gun was sabotaged,” growls 007. “And you know it.”

Q gives him the shrug M has often called insouciant. “I've also seen you shoot accurately under worse circumstances. I'm afraid that excuse won't fly. Next time don't waste my ammunition.”

Scowling, 007 shoves the clipboard across Q’s desk. “Next time give me a gun that can't be arsed with.”

Q could leave the paperwork for the morning, but he doesn’t want it hanging over his head. He gets home at ten. The cats yowl and get under his feet until he gets their tins of food in front of them. Robbed of an hour in his schedule, he does not get through the Heidegger essay in _The Art of Art History_ he had planned on finishing. He does not sleep well that night, and it is 007’s fault.

#

M tells him personally, which is supposed to be better than getting a memo. Much in the same way his laying off ten of his people will be better done face-to-face. More respectful of their time and effort.

That’s what M says, anyway. He thinks it’s much more like chewing off a limb than it needs to be. Everyone knew this was coming--better to let the axe fall quick, and cleanly. 

Another perceived kindness: she gives him free rein within his own department. 

“Keep the ones you think are going to make good,” she says. “I trust your judgement.”

What she means is, she trusts him not to keep the ones he likes, just because he likes them. 

So, from three o’clock he’s doing the “will you just step into my office for a moment” bit with the assistant directors. Robert cries. Kavitha swears. Jun just shrugs and sighs. After that it’s the grunts, who do the real work, and then the five newest hires, who try desperately not to break down.

By six he’s poured and drunk so many cups of tea that his hands are shaking and his jaw aches from the caffeinated clenching of his teeth. Everyone packs it in on time for once--nobody’s staying late after that bloodletting--and by half six he’s on his own with a predictive model he can hardly stand to look at. He has a raging caffeine headache, for one thing, and for another, Kavitha wrote the code.

He’s just taken off his glasses when he hears the doors go. His heart rate spikes and, even as he tells himself that it’s absurd, he envisions an angry victim of the layoffs come back to get revenge. In his haste, he knocks his glasses to the floor.

A large and man-shaped blur looms out of the shadows. Q scrambles up and barks his thigh on the edge of his desk.

“Yours?” asks 007, and a flesh-colored appendage extends toward him, slowly coalescing into a hand, holding his specs. 

He snatches them and crams them back on his face. Usually he is more fastidious about placing them gently, a hand on each arm, to avoid misaligning his impressive prescription. Tonight he is about a hundred yards past that and still going.

“What do you want?” he snaps, still standing. The blossoming bruise on his thigh has already begun to ache.

Unflappable, 007 reaches for the inner pocket of his jacket and produces a slip of paper, folded in two. “An apology,” he says, offering it to Q. “For the drone.” 

Q stares at it.

“It’s a cheque,” says 007 slowly, as if to a child.

“I _know_.” Q grabs the paper and unfolds it. Then laughs, bitterly, at the number of zeroes. “Why don’t you just make this out to her majesty’s government?” he asks. “I don’t bloody need it. I haven’t been let go.”

Bemused, 007 reaches for the cheque as if to take it back, but before he can, Q pockets it. “Though since you’ve already written it, this will make a nice unofficial addition to the branch’s upcoming round of severance payments.”

“Your hands are shaking,” he says, still with that damnable half-smile.

Q stuffs the offending bits of anatomy into his pockets after the unasked for cheque. “Is that all, 007?” he asks, staring at the linoleum just past the agent’s right elbow. 

“You can call me Bond, you know,” he says. “Or James.”

Q blinks at the linoleum, and then looks up. 007 is staring at him. Or, not staring: watching, carefully. Like he’s waiting for something. Q wonders if this is how he looks through the scope of a rifle. If this is how he assesses a contact, or a conquest. 

To his horror, Q feels a blush climbing his neck. He does not doubt that 007 has seen it also. This makes the blush worse.

“Are we quite finished here?” he asks, taking shelter behind a brisk attitude.

“Are we?” The smile will not budge.

“Good _night_ , 007,” says Q, and looks at the door. He keeps looking at the door until 007 has walked out of it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coping mechanisms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said there'd be porn. And so there is.
> 
> 1 kudo=1 prayer. Comments give me life.

He gets home on time, but doesn’t feel like reading. Wasp has vomited on the rug, and he steps in it. After cleaning, he tries to knit, but drops a vital stitch and has to frog three rows of intricate cables. Pear chews his yarn in half when he isn’t looking. He is tired, distracted, unsettled. 

Bond’s cheque is made out to him, personally. It exceeds the limit for his bank app’s remote deposit function. He will have to work a branch visit into his schedule tomorrow. 

Bond made the cheque out to _him_. This must be some catastrophic breach of etiquette. He should probably tell M. What the hell was he thinking, taking it home? What the hell was Bond thinking, giving it to him in the first place?

It takes him several iterations of this train of thought to realize he is thinking of the agent not by number, but by name.

_You can call me Bond, you know. Or James._

“Apology my arse,” he says out loud, to his Sheeler prints, his Kjærholm bookcase, the leggy dracaena by the window. The cats look up from their yin-yang tangle and blink. 

007 was fucking with him; an expensive bait, but an effective one. And he’s falling for it.

With quick, decisive motions, he pins the cheque to the refrigerator with a magnet to deal with in the morning. Resolutely, he puts the whole thing out of his mind as he exfoliates, hydrates, flosses, brushes, straps up his hands, and tucks himself into his single bed. MI6 pays well, for now, but why take up space in a London flat with a double or a queen he doesn’t need? He has taught himself to sleep peacefully: on his back, in a position ergonomically optimized to reduce the pain in his back and shoulders. 

Once he is staring at the ceiling in the dark, he realizes he is never going to fall asleep. Too much caffeine after three o’clock. Endless cups of over-steeped PG Tips, sharing a sympathetic pot with every person destined for the chopping block, have put him into a tooth-clenching pre-insomniac state.

There is melatonin on his bedside table. He knows from experience it will not help. His brain is bound to run in circles through the wee hours.

That fucking cheque. 007 and his smug smile. Permanently affixed to the corner of his mouth, it didn’t even shift for speech; all his words came out crushed, sieved through a clenched jaw. _Your hands are shaking. You can call me Bond, you know. Or James._ And Q had _blushed_ , for God’s sake. What had he to be ashamed about? 

At which point he realizes he was not ashamed at all. Remembering the scene has made him half-hard under the sheets, as though his body knows something he has forgotten. Something Bond knew in the moment, when Q asked, _are we quite finished,_ and Bond had asked him _are we?_

That had not been a bait, not wholly. It had also been a question. 

Q prides himself on understanding the stimuli that will provoke his various responses. It is why he avoids caffeine after three. It is why he doesn’t drink in excess. THC is acceptable, even pleasant, but these days regulated stimulants are a hard no. He knows exactly what he likes in his pornography and in his partners, though lately the latter has not been much of a concern. 

Q likes to watch girls’ faces flush as they get off. He likes to watch skinny boys like him get pegged. Q likes to watch well-negotiated scenes with rope play and explicit consent. Q has a whole folder of feminist, genderqueer bondage porn: soft voices, shy eyes, gentle doms, high-tech toys. 

Yet here he is, lying in bed buzzing with unpleasant chemical energy, half-hard thinking about a musclebound misogynist whose idea of flirtation is destroying government property and distributing inappropriate largess. Bond’s not so stupid as to think the money would actually go toward branch expenses. What the hell was that cheque supposed to cover? 

Q’s brain provides him with several possibilities and his skin goes hot all over. 

After a few more furious seconds, he throws the covers back, tugs off his pyjama bottoms, and yanks open the bedside drawer, not thinking too hard about any of it. If he thinks about it, he will try to turn it into something logical. It is not that at all.

There is a small cache of toys and ephemera in the drawer. Q is not ashamed of sexual pleasure, and enjoys the products of human ingenuity aimed to maximize it. He selects a stainless steel plug and a minimalist bottle of silicone lube, lies back down, and--if this is what his stressed and overcaffeinated brain is after, fine--lets himself think of 007. Bond. James. Whatever.

At first, a fantasy fails to materialize. This is so far from his usual fare that he isn’t sure where to begin. So he begins with that question, _are we?_ And tries to imagine what he might have said after, instead of goodnight.

Except it doesn’t work. He can’t envision himself taking the initiative. 

He rolls back through the conversation, tries to pinpoint the moment his traitorous body began to blush. Those eyes are what he remembers: calculating, and very blue. Eyes that knew what they wanted, and belonged to a man who could take it if no easier path presented itself.

When Q asked, _Are we quite finished here,_ Bond could have told him no.

His cock hardens instantly, and his train of thought follows.

They had the desk between them but Bond moves fast--he is trained to move fast--and so in Q’s imagination Bond’s hand is on his tie and then his face is on the desk and Bond is speaking into his ear. The words still come out crushed, crowded through clenched teeth, and Q can feel hot breath and a little spit on his skin.

_No, we’re not finished. Not until I’m finished with you._

In the manner of fantasy, they’re fucking without segue and Q is naked on his own desk, beneath the gazes of at least five security cameras that feed directly to the heart of MI6. He is hideously ashamed and loving every moment of it. 

He comes, then, very hard, and makes an obscene noise. A few hard breaths later and he is cleaning up, businesslike. The clock reads half midnight. He throws away a wad of tissues and washes the plug in the bathroom sink. In the mirror, his lips are losing the pink flush of orgasm. 

He should not deposit that cheque.

#

At yoga the next morning, Rosie tells him he looks tired.

“Out late?” she asks, as they unroll their mats.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says. Not quite true. He caught three hours in the end and skipped meditation in favor of the snooze button. Some of the sleeplessness was due to caffeine. Some of it was embarrassment. 

“Oh, I have terrible insomnia sometimes too. Have you tried melatonin?” she asks. “Or valerian. Valerian is great.”

He thanks her, tightly, and her smile has an edge that says she noticed. They both get into balasana a bit early, and stay that way until class begins. 

Q has a hard time emptying his thoughts in shavasana. His shoulders are tense, his jaw aches, and every time he thinks about last night he hates himself a little. Every time he thinks about what he has to do at work today, adrenaline floods through his veins.

Except when he gets to MI6, 007’s cheque folded in his breast pocket, 007 is in Odessa, attempting to extract a British-Ukrainian journalist who’s come into some vital intelligence concerning Russia’s digital warfare capabilities. Russia very much does not want him extracted. 

The cheque remains in Q’s pocket. He does not mention it to M. He writes up an EOD report, after handing off the Odessa situation to the night shift. It is only two hours later, there. When he does a final check of the surveillance, it seems Bond is busily infiltrating the hotel room of someone very blonde who may or may not be a supermodel.

If she survives the next forty-eight hours, Q will be very surprised. His money is on the plucky UN aide who has been largely ineffectual at assisting the journalist through traditional channels, but has stuck around long enough to become perilously embroiled in MI6’s plot. And 007’s fickle affections. She’ll probably make it through to the end of this debacle, though her happy ending will be somewhat short-lived once 007 is recalled to London.

“At least it’s not Barbados,” says M, when he hands in his report. “Or even South America. It’d be weeks before we got him back if the weather was any good.”

Q leaves her office without mentioning the cheque. He doesn’t sleep well that night either, or the next. He masturbates twice more, trying to think of anything other than the man busily engaged in endangering women for his own pleasure and Her Majesty’s gain nearly two thousand miles away.

Except it always comes back to that. And why? Because Bond knew what Q wanted before Q understood himself. Which is simultaneously terrifying and intriguing. It makes him furious. How dare that shoot-first ape read him so fast and with such precision? The possibility also scares him. Is he so transparent? Can he be analyzed so swiftly by anyone with eyes? And what do they see, that he’s missing? How many lies does Q tell to himself on a daily basis about what he thinks and feels?

For someone who values objectivity so much, this uncertainty about his own is intolerable.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manners, Q. Manners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Q is thirsty AF.

In yoga, on Thursday, Rosie actually looks concerned.

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” she says, “but are you all right? You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit,” says Q, unrolling his mat. 

“Girl problems?” asks Rosie. Then, reconsidering, “Boy problems? Work problems?”

“Pick two,” says Q, and lies down. His eyes burn with exhaustion. The instructor tells them that it’s time to begin, and when he rolls over he barely holds in a groan. When he doesn’t sleep a full night it puts his shoulders in knots, which aggravates his wrists, which makes him absolutely dread typing. Forget knitting at all. His work is made into misery and he’s robbed of a coping mechanism. 

To make matters worse, he skipped mediation again this morning, and had no yogurt in the fridge. All he’s eaten is a chalky protein bar. After yoga, he finds he is also out of shaving soap. Then his coffee filter breaks and leaves a sludgy mess in the bottom of his cup. There are no seats on the tube.

By the time he arrives in the office, he is in an apocalyptically foul temper, and very near to tears. He does not like to be upset, and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. The more rattled he is, the more rattled he becomes. And it is certainly rattling to find 007 waiting for him in Q branch, badly scorched attache case under one arm.

“My office,” he snaps. “Now.”

007 only follows orders when it suits him, so the fact that he jumps to with the responsive obedience of a sheepdog is even more unnerving.

“Another damage report?” Q asks, not meeting the agent’s eyes. “I’m afraid I’ll need to print some more. At the rate you go through equipment we ought to write an app for your phone. Save both of us these meetings.”

“It isn’t broken,” says 007, setting the case on Q’s desk. “I’m just bringing it back.”

“Good, because I don’t need another one of these.” He pulls the cheque from his pocket and holds it at the end of a stiff arm. “I’m not going to deposit it. It’s a flagrant violation of several points in the employee handbook and you can bloody well take it back.”

Bond looks at him for a long moment, bemused, and then takes the slip of paper from his hands and puts it away inside his jacket with the practiced motion of someone used to pocketing large sums of money. Q hates that he finds this callous disregard for cash so sexy.

“Do you ever take that stick out of your arse?” Bond asks, and he’s _smiling_ again, god damn him, which is no excuse for what Q says next.

“Why?” Driven by fury, he finally looks up: straight into those blue screen of death, stop-all-processing eyes. “Is there something else you’d rather put in?”

Bond is speechless for a second, blinking slowly as if to buy time, and it gives Q a modicum of pride in the midst of his mortification. Then Bond makes a deep, soft sound it takes Q a few beats to place as laughter. Once he does, he feels another blush rise and drops his gaze to the scorched case in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was inappropriate. If you’ll just wait a moment I’ll get those forms and--”

“I told you.” There’s still laughter in his voice. “It isn’t broken.”

“Right, well.. this still requires a sign-off on the return, so if you’ll excuse me I’ll have Andrea bring you the forms in a few--”

He has moved to the door and reached for the handle, to usher 007 out. Before he finishes his sentence, before the latches releases, Bond puts a hand on his wrist and stops him.

His palm is hot and dry, the fingers slightly swollen--cirrhotic edema, maybe, from all those martinis. Or maybe he’s just been firing too many guns in the cold. He doesn’t _hold_ Q’s wrist, though he _could_. Q imagines it: the tight vice of those fingers closing on his bones. He swallows, audibly.

“Q,” says Bond, and the way he chews his words makes it sound like a real name, not a letter.

“Yes, 007?” By contrast, the call sign has never sounded colder.

“Would you like me to?”

He feels every muscle in the core of his body, from his throat to his arsehole, constrict in one sinuous motion. Where Bond’s hand is light on his wrist, Q’s grip on the doorknob is sweaty and strangling. “Jesus Christ,” is all he manages.

Bond’s laughter is subaudible: it is a vibration. It reminds Q of several of the gadgets in his bedside drawer. “Is that a yes?”

The roots of his hair feel hot and he knows he has gone bright red. If he can hear his own breathing, than Bond can too.

He is using the agent’s name, again.

“I think it’s a yes,” says Bond, and Q waits for his next move, skin tingling. But he only makes a little _tch_ sound and pulls his hand from Q’s wrist.

Q is confused, angry with Bond and with himself, until he comes to and sees the agent shaking his head, straightening one cufflink, that half-smile still in place. “Young men these days. At least let me take you to dinner, first.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> food porn, more than porn porn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just...really...like food, okay? 
> 
> Seriously, my writing career is just many incidences of "god damn it, they're EATING again!! How do I get them out of this restaurant!?"
> 
> Anyway. Here's the thing.

Q refuses--politely--and works from home the next day. Nobody asks why. Who wants to be in the office when it feels so empty? He cheats a little--all right he cheats a lot--and spends the morning putting in a grocery order and even running to the corner for coffee. He tidies, and plays with the cats, and tinkers with the specs for a new earpiece. He briefly fantasizes about including a small electrical shock capability, to discipline wayward agents by way of a zap to the sensitive skin inside their ears.

He blushes, thinking about 007’s sensitive...anywhere, and minimizes the screen in favor of his time entry sheet. 

At seven or so--another cheat--he closes up shop and changes out of sweatpants into real clothes: a soft gray Muji turtleneck, black jeans, black Chelsea boots. The kind of thing he’d never quite wear to the office, even on a Friday. 

Though there are groceries in the house now, he takes himself out for dinner, because he’s had a hard week and deserves a treat. The earlier rain has given way to a lovely purple dusk, misty but not cold. The last of sunset turns the clouds above the green garden rosey. A bus splashes by Sadler’s Wells, where the Pina Bausch show is ending next week and he still hasn’t seen it. He sets a reminder on his smartwatch to look at tickets tomorrow.

At The Gate he sits at the bar, which feels less conspicuous when dining alone. The dinner rush is in full swing anyway, and it’s the only place where there’s a seat. He is just settling in with his miso aubergines when he feels a cool brush of air on the back of his neck, above the lip of his sweater. At first he doesn’t think about it--people have been coming in and out since he sat down, and the draft is refreshing, not unpleasant--but just as he lifts his fork a shadow in his peripheral vision resolves into a man in a dark blue windbreaker leaning in to put one elbow on the bar.

The man, of course, is Bond.

He doesn’t exactly look at Q, but keeps his eyes moving over the room as if armed thugs could burst from beneath the tables at any moment. Q, who often eats at The Gate, has never seen this happen and doubts it ever will. 

Then again, he’s never seen 007 at The Gate either.

“Bond?” he squawks, then clears his throat. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

“You sound like M.” 007 laughs. “I’m taking you to dinner.” 

Q sets his fork down, picks up his wine glass, and makes a significant quantity of off-dry riesling disappear.

“Oh,” says the woman to his left, noticing Bond leaning at the end of the bar. “We’re just leaving, if you’d like the seat.”

“No, really--” Q begins, but 007 has already moved smoothly behind him to pull the woman’s stool out so she can exit more gracefully. She smiles and her date looks thunderous.

When they have gone, and the bartender has wiped down the surface in the empty space, 007 climbs up the stool and settles onto it, like a jaguar settling itself on an improbably small tree limb. The sharp edges of the stool press into the muscles of his ass; too many squats to fit properly into chairs. At which point Q realizes he is staring at Bond’s ass and returns his attention to his aubergines and wine.

“Gin martini,” says Bond, when the bartender asks. “Shaken, not--”

“For Christ’s sake.” Q puts down his fork. “This isn’t Monte Carlo.” Unspoken: that Q is not a supermodel or a UN aide, to be so blithely swept off of his feet.

Bond’s smile curls up in the corner of his mouth like a cat, unlikely to be dislodged any time soon. “Well, what are you drinking?”

“The riesling.”

“We’ll have a bottle of that,” says Bond, and the bartender nods and disappears to fetch it. 

In the interval before she returns, with a dewy chilled bottle and an extra glass, Q tries to summon up anything to say. He fails. Bond watches him in silent amusement, occasionally dropping those glacial eyes to toy with his napkin, or raising them to the mirror above the bar to check the room at their backs. When the wine is poured, Bond lifts his glass and says, “cheers.”

Q realizes his mouth is hanging slightly open. He shuts it with a snap and picks up his wine, fumbling because condensation has gathered on the crystal, not because his palms are sweating. 

“This is…” he starts, and then stammers, and tries again. “You’ve got some nerve.”

Even as he drinks, Bond doesn’t lose his smile. “You still sound like M.”

“She bloody trained me. And she’d say the same thing if I told her what you’ve been getting up to.”

“Will you?” asks Bond. Q, who had expected a blithe “you won’t,” is thrown. The tone of this isn’t worried though; only curious. Cocksure, yes, but still asking questions. Keeping the conversation open.

“Look,” says Q, putting his hands flat to either side of his plate. “I don’t know what you’re trying here, but you can bloody well stop it. I shouldn’t have said what I did. It was inappropriate, but I apologized, and if we could _just leave it here_ \--”

“Have you had a chance to look at the menu?” asks the bartender, pushing a flyaway out of her face with the tender side of her wrist, hand cocked back to keep it clean.

“The crispy tofu followed by the curry, please.” As far as Q is aware, Bond has not so much glanced at the menu in front of him, which the waitress now whisks away.

“I was just going to have a small plate,” he says, piqued. He is halfway through his aubergines.

“Well,” says Bond, swirling his wine. “I suppose if you _do_ want to ‘just leave it here,’ you can walk out the door once you've finished. But _I_ was planning on dessert.”

Q’s face goes hot with a blush, up to the roots of his hair. For a moment, he stares helplessly at Bond, knowing he’s gone red. Then he turns abruptly away, only to see his embarrassing expression in the mirror above the bar.

Bond laughs--Q feels the vibration in the air more than hears it--and refills both their glasses.


End file.
